Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I was slumped over sitting on one of the pillows watching the candle flame when suddenly this spider came drifting down from the ceiling and hovered over the flame for a minute and then like it’d gotten too hot the spider started trying to climb back up on its web. It struggled and fought but it was too late, the web turned into a gold wire and the spider lost it and dropped onto the flame where it got instantly crisped and its tiny ashy body floated up on the heat a ways and then it disappeared into thin air.

I was almost crying then. I’d done it, I’d moved the candle under the spider on purpose, it was all my fault. I tried to stand up but couldn’t so I crawled around the room on my hands and knees like a baby looking for I-Man and then down this dark hallway thinking maybe if I could find a peaceful corner I could curl up in with my back to the wall nothing could sneak up and surprise me, goats or lions or avenging spiders but the hall kept curving around until finally I came to a door and pushed it open and I was outside in the sandy yard and the sky was clear and there were millions of stars swimming overhead like fish in schools or birds flying in flocks and the moon was splashing everything on earth with this dry white powder like flour.

I could stand up now so I did and managed to get to the gate in the bamboo fence and out and then I let my feet kind of lead me along the path in the general direction of the ocean which I could locate okay from the sound of the waves until I came out on the beach and plopped down there on the white sand and just watched the waves coming in over and over friendly and slow and no surprises until my heart stopped pounding and I wasn’t breathing so hard and fast anymore. I didn’t think I could find my way back to the ant farm again, I actually didn’t want to go back there yet so I decided to just chill on the beach for the night and wait till daylight to figure out what to do next. I was totally bummed. This was a new kind of lonliness for me. It made me want to stay away from people forever.

That didn’t last, naturally. The next morning I’m sitting on the beach watching this atomic sunrise going on way out at the horizon beyond the gray ocean with sheets of red and yellow and pink clouds going nuts out there and the water all streaky like with blood which is definitely not what you see at dawn in upstate New York after blasting your brains on skunk the night before, and suddenly there was I-Man squatting down beside me. I was real glad to see his familiar brown face, like it was a relative’s face and I didn’t feel lonely anymore.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said he had some food fe strengthen de structure and fe repair de damage from our long journey out of Babylon so I followed him back up to the ant farm where there were these other Rastas squatting around on their heels in the yard smoking spliffs and makin’ chat as I-Man says who he introduced me to, Fattis and Buju and Prince Shabba that he said were his posse.

Prince Shabba I recognized from the night before on account of his humongous bowtie hairdo and the other two were kind of familiar too. They were younger than I-Man, in their thirties or forties maybe, it’s hard to tell because they were skinny dudes and their huge long dreads were kind of distracting and white people even me have trouble telling the age of black adults except by their clothes until they’re really up there like I-Man. They talked to each other in their native language so I didn’t catch much of what they were saying and basically they ignored me, even I-Man which was cool because I figured I’d be smart to just hang and watch and learn what I could before branching out on my own again because these dudes who were basically different from me inside as much as out were also very well adapted to their environment which gave me a good idea of the danger I was in every time I took what I thought was an innocent step.

Like their environment was now mine and the ant farm was definitely not some package-tour hotel for Miller-timers from Indiana. So I just did what I-Man told me, ate when he said and what he said, drank what he gave me and only took real light nips of kali off of the chillum pipe when he passed it over to me and kept the spliffs moving down the line like I had plenty at home for later. No more buster-freak for Bone.

I-Man’s posse was a little like the men of Adirondack Iron except more mellow and at first I thought nonviolent until sometimes they’d be rapping and sucking on a chillum and they’d get all psyched from telling stories which I couldn’t understand and suddenly Fattis or Prince Shabba’d whip out an actual razor-sharp machete and start chopping the air with these vicious swipes and everybody’d laugh and holler like crazy. By then I knew enough of the language that I could tell they were talking about chopping people’s heads off and suchlike. Level de devil wid de bevel! Prince Shabba’d yell and he’d whack his machete into a coconut and split it in half.

And just like the bikers the Rastas didn’t seem to have any regular jobs or families at least not at the ant farm and they spent most of their time hanging and getting high and fixing up the ant farm the way the bikers used to work on their hogs and instead of listening to headbang the Rastas were into constantly playing reggae on I-Man’s box which they called his master-blaster until the batteries ran out and then the same way the bikers used to send me and Russ out for pizza they’d send Fattis or Buju who was the youngest I guess into town for more batteries although I didn’t know yet what they did for money unless I-Man was spending what was left of Buster’s stash. Which was cool by me. I didn’t want it for myself, that’s for sure. I wanted it gone completely and batteries for I-Man’s blaster seemed a harmless way to make it disappear.

We ate mainly stuff they cut off of the trees with their machetes and dug out of the ground and cooked over a fire in the yard, breadfruits which look like grapefruits only taste like bread and akee which are kind of like scrambled eggs when you cook them and your standard hairy green coconuts which they grind up the meat of and mix with everything and these long bananas you cut up and fry called plantains and soursops which’re sweet and creamy inside like custard and regular oranges and these long white yams and calalu and so on, a whole garden of excellent tropical food that grew around the ant farm among the trees and bushes in the same kind of screwy wandering garden as I-Man’d planted in the field around the schoolbus only here it seemed more natural.

Sometimes we’d all go down to the beach and swim and they’d wash their dreadlocks and rub these green leaves all over them afterwards that left them shiny and black as licorice and then the posse’d play this game with a paddle and ball called cricket that was like baseball only slower and more like dancing and originally came from Africa I think although they threw the ball and hit it and caught it and ran back and forth more like a bunch of antelopes than crickets unless they have those kind there that leap about and run and stop. I-Man was good at what they called bowling and they always let him go first and he’d bowl for a long time only it was overhand and upside down from the kind of bowling I knew.

Quite a few different people came by the ant farm, fellow Rastas and some regular Jamaicans and even a few Chinese guys and a couple of buff females one time who’d hang and smoke for an hour or two and then split and pretty soon I came to understand that I-Man and his posse were doing some serious ganja dealing on the side which explained a few things. They had like tubs of it stashed in the back rooms of the ant farm and they moved it in these paper bags like it was rice a pound at a time it looked like. The ant farm was a factory outlet for ganja and for a heavy pot smoker hanging there with I-Man and the posse was like dying and going to heaven except I was pretty cautious now due to so many things surprising me every day and only took my toke when it would’ve been weird or embarrassing not to.